Evening Brief: Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Tonight’s Evening Brief is brought to you by the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries (CADSI) on behalf of its 1,000 member companies. CADSI is proud to host CANSEC 2014, Canada’s premier defence trade show. To register, visit defenceandsecurity.ca/CANSEC.

Evening all,

Parliament is on a one-week break. Ottawa was relatively quiet today, so we begin with international news.

Canadian election observers being deployed ahead of Ukraine’s May 25 presidential election have arrived in Kyiv. There are two Canadian observer contingents; 298 observers being dispatched as part of the official OSCE observer delegation and a smaller group participating in a bilateral mission. Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced today that Conservative Senator Raynell Andreychuk and former Ontario premier Mike Harris will lead the bilateral mission. A statement from the PMO said Harris will bring “insights and expertise from the democratic process.”

The growing chorus of disapprobation around Harper’s public targeting of Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin now includes some of his predecessors. The Toronto Star’s Tonda MacCharles spoke with former prime ministers Paul Martin and Joe Clark, who described the PMO’s treatment of McLachlin as “very inappropriate.”

A week ahead of Stephen Harper’s Toronto summit on maternal and child health, noted philanthropist Melinda Gates says an unacceptable number of newborn babies are dying in poor countries because the developed world simply isn’t investing enough money to save them. Gates is issuing an international call for more funding as she helps launch new research in the medical journal The Lancet on the plight of new mothers, babies and young children in developing countries.

Canadian children and youth are less active than their peers in many other countries, something a new report blames on Canada’s “culture of convenience.” Active Healthy Kids — an organization that promotes activity among children and youth — gave Canada a D- in overall physical activity levels when compared to 14 other countries. Although Canada is among the leaders in policies and programs to promote physical activity, the report — titled “Is Canada in the running?” — suggests people are not taking advantage of them.

In Sherbrooke, Que., erstwhile media tycoon and freshly elected Parti Quebecois MNA Pierre Karl Peladeau is recovering in a local hospital after a serious cycling accident in the Eastern Townships Sunday. A statement from the PQ said Peladeau, a widely presumed contender for the party’s leadership, sustained multiple fractures in the mishap. The party didn’t offer a timeline for Peladeau’s recovery from injuries which include hip and clavicle fractures, but he definitely wasn’t well enough to take his seat in the legislature when it resumed sitting today.

In the U.K., it should be an interesting summer in the competing campaigns for and against Scottish independence. British Prime Minister David Cameron has been balky about getting overly involved in the anti-independence campaign ahead of the September 18 referendum on secession, but the pro-separation side is now gaining in the polls. Here’s why Cameron is finding it hard to convince Scotland to stay in the U.K.

Another week, another alarming scientific report on the costs and impact of climate change. This one is from the Union of Concerned Scientists and outlines which national U.S. landmarks, from the Statue of Liberty to Cape Canaveral’s launch pads, are under threat from the atmospheric effects of global warming.

The Harper government is quietly selling off the silverware – the Parliamentary Dining Room silverware, that is. iPolitics has learned that silver cutlery, trays and serving pieces used for years in the posh parliamentary restaurant have been put up for auction on GCSurplus — the government’s equivalent of EBay.

Finally — it’s a major day in the prologue to November’s midterms south of the border. Six states are holding primaries today in some of the map’s most compelling races, which makes it the midterm version of Super Tuesday. The ongoing struggle between the establishment and tea party wings of the Republican Party is playing out, notably in Kentucky, where Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has spent a record $10 million fending off a tea party challenge.